The first thought I have is to muse whether Chantal Hebert will talk about the new Nanos poll that shows a dead heat (and Liberal support rising, though the Cons. support rose as well), or will she simply ignore it like she did the Decima poll a week or so back, because it doesn’t fit in with her meme of the Liberals and Dion’s certain doom (and we can throw in that question to Jim Travers of the Star as well, since he’s been a close second since December 2006 of bashing the Liberals and Dion).

The next thing I will say is that certain Liberal bloggers who jumped on […]

Apparently, according to some readers, I only bring up polls I like on this blog. First off, I’ll mention that Angus Reid released an (online) poll for the Toronto Star the past couple of days that showed the Cons. up by 10 over the Liberals, had the NDP near 20%, and which seemingly put Chantal Hebert into overdrive mode at the Star in her op-ed columns claiming this poll showed that the Liberals and Dion were dead in Quebec; she was already doing this after the CROP/La Presse poll came out earlier that had the Liberals down by 10 to the Cons. and BQ in Quebec.

This was done a week or so after another column where she played down other polls which showed Conservative strength much lower in Quebec and had her arguing those polls didn’t match what was heard and seen on the ground (which curiously enough, is what Antonio over at Fuddle-Duddle has been claiming as well to me as well – coincidence?). So, I’ll be very interested to see if the new Harris-Decima poll gets mentioned by her – or others – that shows another polling deadlock:

I am pleased to see a Nanos poll out so soon after the last one he did – mainly because of all the contradictory polling results we’ve seen since then. The latest results? A dead heat between the Liberals and Conservatives, and the NDP falling quite substantially:

At this particular point, the Liberals compromise on Afghanistan they crafted has not hurt their position from the last Nanos poll, while the NDP has surprisingly dropped during this time period. As others have said, perhaps it’s because they and their position has been marginalized by the media over this debate. […]

If these numbers are true, and if they hold during an election, rather remarkable for the Green Party:

In its two most recent surveys of party preference in the GTA, Harris/Decima has found that the Green party is thriving in the mainly suburban, 905 area code – 16 per cent support in polling carried out over the last week, 17 per cent in a survey carried out toward the end of December. That’s virtually the same support, if not better, than the Green party enjoys in the mainly downtown, 416 area code in the GTA. For the past month, Harris/Decima has been tracking the Greens with support ranging between 11 and 15 per cent among Toronto’s urban voters. There are many implications here for the other, more mainstream parties, especially the New Democrats, who are now routinely placing well behind the Greens – by as much as seven percentage points in December – within the 905 area code…If this trend continues, it will mean the Greens are actually displacing the NDP as the third party behind the Liberals and Conservatives, at least in Toronto’s suburbs.

That’s a stunning percentage for the Green Party, and it’s probably why the NDP wishes to do the Greens no favours on the national stage (ie. not supporting May being in any leaders debate during an election campaign). It’s understandable to try and protect your position, even if it means attacking a party that is basically an ally on the environment. It makes sense though that the Greens would do well in the suburbs – this is an area that has some remaining bastions of “Red Tory’ism” in it, and those voters, who might be socially liberal and who believe in protecting the environment, but are economically conservative, might prefer the Greens to the left-of-centre social democratic/socialist NDP.

All of the mainstream parties, not just the NDP, will of course point out that until the Greens show they can maintain their strength during an election campaign and win some seats, this is nothing more then “parked votes”. That’s a good point, but for the Greens to have such strength now shows that voters in suburbia are seriously considering them as an alternative.

A new poll suggests Stephen Harper’s Conservatives have lost their big lead over the Liberals in the wake of recent controversies, plunging six percentage points in popular support in just one week. The Canadian Press Harris-Decima survey puts the Tories at 30 per cent support, in a statistical tie with the Liberals who are up four points to 32 per cent. Support for the Tories dropped across all regions and demographic groups.

I’m less inclined to believe Mulroney/Schreiber had anything to do with this plunge. I’m more inclined to believe that a) Canadians did not like Baird and Harper’s stance at […]

I didn’t see the original last paragraph in question of this blogpiece here which caused a senior VP at Ipsos to threaten legal action against Paulitics: Paul’s Socialist Investigations, (it was changed “gratuitously” (without admission of guilt or wrongdoing) to appease the Ipsos folks to avoid legal action), so I can’t say whether the fellow had a case in saying it was libelous. That said, I do find what he’s been leaving in the comments section over here with regards to this article at Saskboy’s place to be rather …well.. unbecoming of a senior Vice-President of a major polling company. There must be a lot of free time at Ipsos […]

A news headline a week or so ago in the Toronto Star read more or less “Harper to Cities: Drop dead”. That set off a round of indignation in the right-wing blogosphere bordering on hysterics, with some suggesting the Toronto Star could or should be sued for daring to interpret Harper’s brush-off of helping to fund cities infrastructure in the manner in which they did. I am waiting to hear some equal outrage from those folks over Sun Media’s title of Greg Weston’s column today that reads: True Grits or twits? Ontario loyal to federal Liberals, despite qualms about Dion.

Greg Staples (of Political Staples) has been on a bit of a hiatus, but he’s been back to comment on polls. Specifically, he was grousing about the Strategic Council Poll that shows a political tie/deadlock and was inferring they weren’t accurate, while also grousing a bit about today’s Decima poll)

Well, I wanted to point out to Greg (and others do as well) that SES has now confirmed the deadlock that SC saw, and at the same time basically confirming their leadership poll they did the other day (that had Blogging Tories and SunMedia columnists crowing alike about how done Dion and the Liberals were) to be as irrelevant to polling intentions as I’ve been arguing for awhile. We elect parties, not presidents.

Cons. 35
Libs 34
NDP 17
BQ 9
Green 6

Note the substantial lower Green Vote in this poll as compared to the SC poll (and other polls) as well as the substantially higher NDP vote – more at traditional NDP voting levels.

I’ll wait with baited breath to hear from Greg Weston and other assorted Sun Media hacks who were proclaiming the death of Dion and the Liberals from a couple of days ago how this poll might actually prove they aren’t quite accurate on that count, and that it actually reflects badly on Harper and the Cons for failing to do anything with this supposed “leadership advantage”

I’ll wait, but I won’t bet money on seeing such a column, though I’ll admit that Mr. Weston is the “fairest” of the Sun columnists when talking politics, so maybe he’ll surprise me.

[email protected]:33pm: Darren quotes a key part of Nik Nanos’ analysis, which I was referring to earlier about electing parties, not presidents:

This research shows that the Harper leadership advantage has not converted itself into the ballot box nationally. For the Tories to move the dial, they have to realize they are fighting the Liberal “brand”

As pointed out by Red Tory today, we had conservative bloggers like Steve Janke howling with glee at the personal leaders preference out of the Sun yesterday which showed Dion’s personal rating in 3rd place, and also showing that he’s a concern troll, asking how much more us Liberals would tolerate of this supposed weakness we have at leadership.

Unfortunately for Janke, and others of like mind, we elect parties to power here in Canada, not presidents. Leadership ratings aren’t the be-all and end-all to getting elected (as pointed out by Darren here). This morning, the Con. party that Mr. Harper leads has now, with all this supposed Liberal leadership weakness, and with all these tax cuts designed to give them a boost in electoral fortunes, managed to fall into a dead-heat tie with the Liberals in the latest Strategic Council Poll:

The survey by the Strategic Counsel for The Globe and Mail/CTV News shows the two parties each with the support of 32 per cent of Canadians. The Conservatives had led the Liberals 34 per cent to 29 per cent in a poll taken two weeks before the mini-budget, which included income-tax relief and a one-percentage-point cut to the GST.

I love this quote by Peter Donolo:

“Two weeks ago, when they had their mini-budget, with billions and billions of tax cuts, they couldn’t have imagined that the Canadian public would thank them by seeing their numbers drop,” he said.

Maybe I should be asking Mr. Janke and other BT’ers how long is it going to take to realize that voters and people simply aren’t that comfortable with the Con. party or their policies to trust giving it a majority government. An example of one such policy that makes voters uncomfortable? A majority of voters disagree with the Cons. decision to no longer seek clemency for Canadians who face the death penalty in other countries.

At the moment, there is enough discomfort out there with Con. policies to not even guarantee the Cons’ re-election, despite what voters may think of Mr. Dion, and despite the Cons. attempts to seduce voters with tax cuts.

I could have also talked about the NDP drop in support in this poll, or the fact the Greens are now, for the first time, actually ahead of the NDP nationally (though obviously within the MOE and for all intents and purposes a dead-heat) , but I’ll leave others to talk about that angle of the story. I believe the real story here is the voting public isn’t buying what the Cons. are trying to sell.

Aaron apparently has decided I’m the only one in the Liberal or progressive blogosphere who needs to report on polls, so to help him out a bit, I’ll point him to Steve’s post which shows a Strategic Council poll released yesterday showing the Tories with only a 34 – 29 lead on the Liberals – nowhere near a majority government – and this despite the Liberals troubles the past month. As Steve says, it’s back to reality for the Conservatives and their supporters like Aaron after all their trolling and gloating over one Ipsos poll showing a 12 point lead – a poll that in my opinion generally gives higher […]